Circuit boards are widely used by the Electrical and Electronics Industry in the manufacture of electrical and electronic equipment. Such circuit boards are prepared with printed wiring used to interconnect electrical components that form the elements of the electrical and electronic equipment. Safety requires that electrical and electronic equipment be protected by fuse apparatus that operates upon faults occurring in the equipment circuitry to open electrical circuits and remove the electrical source supplying operating current to the equipment. The removal of the electrical source prevents overloads that may damage the electrical and electronic equipment.
Modern electrical and electronic equipment may be purchased with a minimum of circuit boards. Subsequently, new boards may be designed and added to the original equipment to update or improve the operation of the equipment. For example, personal computers oftentimes have expansion slots which enable new circuit boards such as expanded memory modules, facsimile, graphics, video and many other types of circuit boards to be mounted in the personal computer expansion slots. A problem arises in that the addition of circuit boards to equipment may change the current requirements such that additional fuses are required to insure the safe operation of the added circuit boards with the original equipment. Another problem arises in that fuses must be mounted on the circuit boards in order to meet the safety requirements for the equipment. Such circuit board fuses are required to have arc-suppressant features to minimize damage to the equipment.